Russia is struggling to attract more military manpower and provide them with sufficient training, unnamed western officials told CNN on April 5.
According to CNN, Western officials say it remains unclear how Russia plans to acquire the 400,000 new troops it admittedly needs not only to fight in Ukraine but to be stationed along the border with NATO and Finland.
"Whether the population can sustain another round of mobilization and whether the Kremlin actually wants to test the population's resilience to that is unclear at the moment," the officials said, as quoted by CNN.
However, the fact that they haven't launched another round of mobilization points to concerns in the Kremlin over the potential backlash, the officials added.
Western officials also believe that discrepancies in training, with some soldiers being sent to training camps in Belarus and others going straight to the front, indicate "a real problem" with Russia's military manpower, CNN wrote.
Illia Ponomarenko
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